3D printing resources

Cat drinking pond by JohK. Print the cat-drinkpond.stl file:Please make sure to use a "food safe" plastic to not put your pet's health at risk.

Extruding the plastic through a brass nozzle might increase the lead content of final product. (Also see the discussion below) I got good results with PLA, .35mm nozzle at .2mm layer height. I also used 4 perimeters and 5 top layers to make it watertight. You might get away with fewer layers and perimeters, but I didn't want to take a risk. Then go and find some empty PET-bottle (no pun intended) that has a PCO028 thread (coke bottle, or similar thick-walled bottle).

If you already have a bowl that you like to use with a bottle as a reservoir you can also print the cat-drinkpond-tower.stl, which basically is a stand for the bottle with some openings. I got rid of the "work in progress".
3D Models To Help You Build Better, Faster!
Mechanical Design for 3D Printing - The Adventures of Eiki Martinson. There's a great deal of hype surrounding the technology of additive manufacturing or 3D printing just now.

I'm sure my audience has heard things like “It'll make whatever you can imagine”, to which the appropriate answer is, after Han Solo, “I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit.” In truth, like any manufacturing technique, 3D printing is ideal for some things, marginal for others, and completely unworkable for a few; but with a bit of knowledge about the limitations of your particular additive process and some clever workarounds, you can expand the capabilities of the machine and avoid the inevitable hype hangover.

Here I've collected a few modest contributions to that: some common mechanical components and structural features that hopefully will be of use to your 3D printing projects. Screw Threads Machine screws, bolts and nuts, lead screws, and so forth are not really well suited to low-end 3D printing in its present state of development. Nut and bolt assembled. Www.myminifactory.com. Shapeways 3D Printing Marketplace. Gumroad. The Virtual Foundry Releases Filamet 3D Printing Filament That Turns FDM 3D Printers into Metal 3D Printers. More industries than ever before are purchasing metal 3D printers and using them to manufacture high-quality prototypes, test parts and end-run parts with geometries that could only be manufactured using a 3D printer.

The average cost of a metal 3D printer will typically range from several hundred thousand dollars to more than a million dollars, pricing them well out of reach for most businesses. But despite a growing demand for cheap and fast metal 3D printing technology, it continues to elude the 3D printing industry. Unfortunately there seems to be very little on the horizon that is expected to change that any time soon. However, material science has started to offer the industry a few alternatives in the form of metal-infused PLA filament for desktop FDM 3D printers. ColorFabb has offered several of these advanced materials that consist of 40% to 50% metal powders mixed with PLA, allowing the final prints to be polished and shined up to a metallic finish.
3D printed BB-8 robot: part 2.

A week ago we looked at the beginnings of Endurance’s 3D printed BB-8 SelfieBot.

The company has continued with the project, adding upgrades! It now functions outdoors without batteries or connection to a power supply. How? Solar panels! Installing the solar panels Endurance put together a chain of 2 small solar panels (5 volts each). There’s a kind of platform with a hidden reel inside, which generates electromagnetic field. Obviously, the efficiency of this charger is low. Nonetheless, in sunny weather the SelfieBot is able to work powered by only three solar panels. As it is noisier outdoors than indoors, and the telephone/tablet speakers are not powerful enough, Endurance decided to additionally connect another passive speaker to BB-8 via mini jack. Stay tuned for more updates on the project’s progress, including improving the stability, improvement to noise insulation and painting the BB-8!

You can make your own robot using the DIY SelfieBot program.
30 Cool Things to 3D Print Which Are Actually Useful. Stuck for ideas for what to 3D print?

Bored of pointless trinkets and doodads? A list of cool things to 3D print which are genuinely useful. Don’t miss: 34 Best Sites for Free 3D Printer STL Files/3D Printer Models Like us, you’re tremendously excited by the possibilities of 3D printing. Unfortunately, the landscape is cluttered with trinkets, doodads and ornaments. Fight the tide of mediocrity! Don’t have access to a 3D printer? Related: Looking for more 3D printing ideas?